[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION] What did the first galaxies look like? To help answer this question, the Hubble Space Telescope has just finished taking the eXtreme Deep Field (XDF), the deepest image of the universe ever taken in visible light. Pictured above, the XDF shows a sampling of some of the oldest galaxies […]
It’s easy to get lost following the intricate filaments in this detailed mosaic image of faint supernova remnant Simeis 147 (S147). Also cataloged as Sh2-240, it covers nearly 3 degrees or 6 full moons on the sky. That’s about 150 light-years at the stellar debris cloud’s estimated distance of 3,000 light-years. … This sharp composite […]
Near the center of this sharp cosmic portrait, at the heart of the Orion Nebula, are four hot, massive stars known as the Trapezium. Gathered within a region about 1.5 light-years in radius, they dominate the core of the dense Orion Nebula Star Cluster. Ultraviolet ionizing radiation from the Trapezium stars, mostly from the brightest […]
A mere seven hundred light years from Earth, in the constellation Aquarius, a sun-like star is dying. Its last few thousand years have produced the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293), a well studied and nearby example of a Planetary Nebula, typical of this final phase of stellar evolution. A total of 58 hours of exposure time […]
By Antonio Huneeus The special event, “Military UFOs: Secrets Revealed,” held last Saturday September 22 at the National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas, turned out to be a very interesting program. This was part of an ongoing series of lectures attached to their new exhibit, “Area 51: Myth or Reality,” and the goal was […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION] Cosmic dust clouds sprawl across a rich field of stars in this sweeping telescopic vista near the northern boundary of Corona Australis, the Southern Crown. Probably less than 500 light-years away and effectively blocking light from more distant, background stars in the Milky Way, the densest part of the […]
[Click on image for high resolution] Scientists have observed what they believe to be the most distant and oldest galaxy ever detected — a discovery which could provide insight into the nature of the universe in its infancy. “This galaxy is the most distant object we have ever observed with high confidence,” Wei Zheng, the […]
Last week the robotic Dawn spacecraft ended its year-long mission to asteroid Vesta, becoming the first spacecraft ever to visit this far off world located between Mars and Jupiter, in the Solar System’s main asteroid belt. … Vesta shows evidence of being a leftover from the early years of our Solar System, a building block […]
[Click on image for high resolution] Giant elliptical galaxy M60 and spiral galaxy NGC 4647 do look like an odd couple in this sharp cosmic portrait from the Hubble Space Telescope. But they are found in a region of space where galaxies tend to gather, on the eastern side of the nearby Virgo Galaxy Cluster. […]
[CLICK ON IMAGE FOR HIGH RESOLUTION] Curiosity is on the move across Mars — but where is it going? The car-sized rover’s path after 29 Martian days on the surface is shown on the above map. Curiosity is still almost 300 meters from its first major destination, though, a meeting of different types of terrain […]
